Pulse shaping is desirable in many applications involving ultrafast laser pulses. A notable example of such an application is the adjustment of pulse bandwidth to enhance pulse compression and consequently enable the generation of pulses having a shorter duration than those obtained directly from an ultrafast laser oscillator. Pulse shaping can be achieved through the well-known technique of spatially dispersing the spectral content of a pulse using a diffraction grating, transforming the pulse into a Fourier plane using appropriate imaging optics, then manipulating the amplitude or phase of the dispersed components of the pulse in the Fourier plane using a spatial light modulator (SLM). The modulated pulse is then re-transformed to the time domain with an additional imaging optics and a second grating or by back-propagating the pulse through the input optics in reverse order to obtain a modified pulse.
Such a pulse-shaping scheme is typically optimized for a specific pulse bandwidth and will yield degraded performance when attempting to manipulate pulses with spectral content differing from that anticipated by the nominal optical configuration. It would be advantageous to develop a pulse shaping offering more flexibility in handling differing input pulse bandwidths while retaining a high degree of programmability and convenience of use.